


danveer

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Mahabharata fics [17]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Missing Scene, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 11:52:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: No one leaves Vasusena without at least something, and the Pandava Queen Mother walks away from the King of Anga with the promise of five sons. He also grants her the chance to hold his face in her palms, for her to fuss over him as a mother would, just once.danveer (Sanksrit): generous, one of Karna's names





	danveer

No one leaves Vasusena without at least something, and the Pandava Queen Mother walks away from the King of Anga with the promise of five sons. He also grants her the chance to hold his face in her palms, for her to fuss over him as a mother would, just once.

Kunti’s -- Pritha’s -- _Mother’s_ fingers crest over the still-bleeding divots in his ears. “When I knew I must bear you, no matter the consequences, I made Suryadev promise me that you would be protected on the river Ganga. Your _kavach_ and _kundal_ were the one gift that I -- we -- could give you.”

Karna thinks of being a girl not past fourteen, victim of a god’s lust, and he thinks of being a boy suffocated by bastardy and caste. He considers what it would have been like to be Kaunteya and not Radheya; the hard line to Kunti’s chin suggests a harshness that Radha never had to cultivate in herself, never having suffered widowhood, but her eyes shine with desperate fear -- and love -- for her chosen sons, just as his true mother’s eyes would.

“You truly will not reconsider?”

Karna shakes his head.

Kunti’s face crumples, and despite himself, Karna can feel the noose of a foreign grief tightening around his throat -- brothers he could have known, a heritage that could have been his, a mother that could have been his. It is not his own grief to suffer, not really, but it is enough to make his eyes burn while he watches the Pandava Queen Mother regain control of herself.

Kunti finishes scrubbing her face with her widow’s white _pallu_ _._ Her eyes and face are still blotchy. “Then there is one last thing I must do.”

Karna waits.

And she slaps him clean across the face.

“For Panchaali,” she says dully, and Karna has to _laugh_ _._ He had heard of how the Pandava Queen Mother had railed against her own sons on behalf of her humbled daughter-in-law, how she had ordered them to balance their wife’s tears with Kaurava blood. She considers Draupadi her own daughter -- just as she took the Madreyas both to her heart -- even more so than she looks upon him with a mother’s eyes.

Retorts and replies crowd his tongue.

_You yourself feared her so much that you divided her between your sons like a sheet of dosa, fresh off the fire -- a beauty sprung from the flames who had to be contained, lest she tear them apart._

_If you had accepted me at the outset, she would have been my wife as well, honorably and properly wed, and there would have been no need for either of us to humiliate the other in front of all._

_I am sorry that all these years you have had to watch this tableau playing out -- the son you could never accept standing on one side of the battlefield, and the sons you could acknowledge and the daughter you adopted on the other side._

Karna speaks none of them. Instead he asks, “Have I given you some satisfaction, by being victim to your blows?”

So many names he will never be able to truly earn, but Danveer at least shall be one of them.

His mother turns away, her white veil flapping in the midnight air as she leaves, as satisfied as anyone can be on the eve of Kurukshetra.


End file.
